No one has answered his question yet! The links Rayin posted dont give any information to the DIFFERENCE between XC and All Mountain, let alone define All Mountain.

I'm sure peoples opinions vary, but this is what I define All Mountain as. All Mountain is trail riding, or off road riding only. XC is multiple terrain riding, with steep climbs and terrain can vary from grass, dirt, rocks, stone paths ect. Am I close?

XC is typically on smoother groomed trails All Mountian is closer to Freeride in that the jumps are bigger the terrain is rougher and the bikes are stronger and a bit heavier. XC is mostly about lightweight and speed where All mountain is more about going out and having some fun on jumps and smaller drops but not doing really crazy stuff.
All mountain can also be described as XC for bigger boys

So... Freeride is typically jumps, drops ect.
All Mountain fits inbetween Freeride and XC, where the terrain is a bit rougher and consits of some jumps ect. nothing too big.
And XC is obiously more an endurance and high speed off road racing on trails and some other terrain.

All-mountain, Freeride and XC all used to be called XC back before people started making a distinction based on intensity. These days, XC is considered primarily smooth fast offroad riding as others above have indicated. Freeride tends to be a more aggressive form of XC riding that pushes the boundaries of both skill and equipment and includes a lot more jumps with less emphasis on distance and speed. All-mountain tends to be a more reserved form of freeride where one tackles pretty much the same types of terrain but on a level that is much more in the comfort zone. I tend to think of the difference as this: all-mountain riding is doing what you regularly know you can do whereas freeriding is a bit more experimental. All-mountain is really what XC used to be before XC was used to describe XC riding that got pushed to one edge that emphasised race-like conditions and freeride was XC riding that got pushed to the other which emphasised stunts and more technical type riding. The stuff in the middle is all-mountain.

But is it really that bad that equipment is getting more specialized? XC frames are light, and freeride are meant to take a beating, downhill even more so...I don't see why it's a problem to have two or more types of bikes for different activities. The "All Mountain" term may be a bit overkill I guess...

I sure as heck wouldn't want to be riding a road bike with slicks on a single track.

But is it really that bad that equipment is getting more specialized? XC frames are light, and freeride are meant to take a beating, downhill even more so...I don't see why it's a problem to have two or more types of bikes for different activities. The "All Mountain" term may be a bit overkill I guess...

It's not really bad per se. However it is limiting for the average rider unless you happen to carry around two or more bikes with you wherever you go. The problem is that by specialising the equipment, you're specialising the ride. While this may be okay in racing and competition because the course is known well before hand and thus you can choose the best weapon to use, for those of us who just want to go out and hit some trail, we oftentimes don't know what's "best" so we'll usually use a bike that we hope can handle most of what we'll encounter. Oftentimes this bike is either a freeride or all-mountain as defined today. However, if we pick an all-mountain and it's not up to the technical task we either end up breaking something, bypassing the terrain or walking/carrying. If we pick an all-mountain and the terrain is very smooth and fast, it's not so bad but we'd probably wish we had chosen our XC rig. If we were on our freeride than we'd wish even more that we had our XC rig. But what if we were on our XC bike and we encountered terrain with hucks and jumps? Then of course we would wish we'd have chosen something in the opposite end of the spectrum. That said, there is never going to be one bike that does everything the best. We can pick specialised bikes that perform better at one end of the spectrum or another and have some capabilities to get us by throughout a range of riding or we can pick one that is optimised (some might say compromised) for the middle ground with a range that stretches to the edges where it will perform adequately but not great. At the end of the day, it's often the rider who pulls it out of the fire regardless of the bike but a bike that's too specialised for an application may not inspire the confidence necessary to tackle a wide range of conditions that's often seen in "real-world" riding.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Binda

I sure as heck wouldn't want to be riding a road bike with slicks on a single track.